Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Dark Garden has another dress featured on Offbeat Bride!
It looks like that makes 11 posts in which we have been featured on Offbeat Bride.
Elle Yoffee was a delight to work with and personified the traditional Dark Garden bride: untraditional.
Find the post about their Gothic Punk Seaside Wedding here:Elle Yoffee on Offbeat Bride
And enjoy these beautiful photos by Jessamyn Harris

Dark Garden's show at
the Edwardian Ball 2012 had the most amazing hair styles. Elaborate
styles were needed to best uphold and display hair jewelry and hats. As
we wrote in the article <"Edwardian Ball 2012 - Photographer Audrey
Penven"> resident designers, Kalico Delafay and Holly Bobisuthi, had a
specific vision for the show and needed the collection of 13 ensembles
photographed in
advance.

Kalico
brought on heavy hitter, Shannon Solano, who has designed hair for
film, music, and special events as well as being available at the Elixir Salon & Spa in Berkeley two days a week.

Shannon
enthusiastically created a dozen gorgeous hairstyles using models with
hair from short and curly to long down their back or to their knees to
dreads and extensions! Each style complemented the clothes and the
model's
face. At the photoshoot, Shannon carefully documented as she created
because day of the Edwardian Ball she did it all again! This time she
used her assistant Andrea Costanzo,
mistress of the flat iron, and between the two of them managed to reduce
the time to style a dozen women from 7 hours down to 5---and with
pinning and pinning, made sure that the styles held up for a full night
of show and resplendent celebration afterwards.

To top it off, as someone who was in the stylist chair for 45 minutes for an elaborate
UpDo, the energy and conversation was just the right mixture of upbeat, supportive and respectful of my need to focus on telling a good story of the GHOSTS OF THE UNFORTUNATE HEIRESSES.

For those of you who saw Dark Garden's GHOSTS OF THE UNFORTUNATE HEIRESSES at
the Edwardian Ball San Francisco, (or in Los Angeles Sunday Feb 19th,) you will have noticed that the fashions were
projected larger than life onto the stage backdrop. This was an effect
desired by the collection's resident designers, Kalico Delafay and Holly
Bobisuthi, in order to show greater detail of corsets, clothes, jewelry
and hats that they and so many at the shop had put hours of work into.
Given the site lines from the ballroom floor and the balcony, and the
entire collection was
black on black, we on the production team thought this a brilliant
idea...even though to do so would
require finishing the collection of 13 looks earlier than previous
shows in time to photograph them, select and crop the pictures (with no
time for retouching).

So
exactly one week before the event, the talented photographer Audrey
Penven had all of the models, designers, make-up and hair stylists to
her studio at #ArdentWest in San Francisco's SOMA for 7 hours of
fast-paced, rewarding work. Audrey describes herself on her Twitter profile (@yerdua) as
"Post-nihilist, post-gender, geeky, artist/photographer type, mostly filled with excitement and curiosity." She
is all that AND thoughtful, talented, generous and funny. She put the
models at ease, respecting them and empowering each one to be themselves
in front of the camera. Audrey
worked collaboratively with Holly and Kalico on their vision of each
ensemble and with Todi on overall direction and feeling. It was a long
day as each model had professional make-up by Joey McGuire and hair
styled by Shannon Solano (more on those two in upcoming blog articles),
then dressed by Kalico or Holly...then undressed and onto the next!

Audrey's
enthusiasm was as high with the last at 9pm as it was with the first at
3pm. She was supported by Slim (@sfslim) as photo assistant setting up
backdrop and lights and by the generosity of all the people of Ardent
West.

Of
course there's more... Audrey spent the next day viewing hundreds of
photos, passing along dozens of each model for final selection and
upload to the Edwardian Ball's production team. Thanks to everyone
creating the big show
and a heartfelt thank you to Audrey!

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Dark Garden has another dress featured on Offbeat Bride!
It looks like that makes 11 posts in which we have been featured on Offbeat Bride.
Elle Yoffee was a delight to work with and personified the traditional Dark Garden bride: untraditional.
Find the post about their Gothic Punk Seaside Wedding here:Elle Yoffee on Offbeat Bride
And enjoy these beautiful photos by Jessamyn Harris

Dark Garden's show at
the Edwardian Ball 2012 had the most amazing hair styles. Elaborate
styles were needed to best uphold and display hair jewelry and hats. As
we wrote in the article <"Edwardian Ball 2012 - Photographer Audrey
Penven"> resident designers, Kalico Delafay and Holly Bobisuthi, had a
specific vision for the show and needed the collection of 13 ensembles
photographed in
advance.

Kalico
brought on heavy hitter, Shannon Solano, who has designed hair for
film, music, and special events as well as being available at the Elixir Salon & Spa in Berkeley two days a week.

Shannon
enthusiastically created a dozen gorgeous hairstyles using models with
hair from short and curly to long down their back or to their knees to
dreads and extensions! Each style complemented the clothes and the
model's
face. At the photoshoot, Shannon carefully documented as she created
because day of the Edwardian Ball she did it all again! This time she
used her assistant Andrea Costanzo,
mistress of the flat iron, and between the two of them managed to reduce
the time to style a dozen women from 7 hours down to 5---and with
pinning and pinning, made sure that the styles held up for a full night
of show and resplendent celebration afterwards.

To top it off, as someone who was in the stylist chair for 45 minutes for an elaborate
UpDo, the energy and conversation was just the right mixture of upbeat, supportive and respectful of my need to focus on telling a good story of the GHOSTS OF THE UNFORTUNATE HEIRESSES.

For those of you who saw Dark Garden's GHOSTS OF THE UNFORTUNATE HEIRESSES at
the Edwardian Ball San Francisco, (or in Los Angeles Sunday Feb 19th,) you will have noticed that the fashions were
projected larger than life onto the stage backdrop. This was an effect
desired by the collection's resident designers, Kalico Delafay and Holly
Bobisuthi, in order to show greater detail of corsets, clothes, jewelry
and hats that they and so many at the shop had put hours of work into.
Given the site lines from the ballroom floor and the balcony, and the
entire collection was
black on black, we on the production team thought this a brilliant
idea...even though to do so would
require finishing the collection of 13 looks earlier than previous
shows in time to photograph them, select and crop the pictures (with no
time for retouching).

So
exactly one week before the event, the talented photographer Audrey
Penven had all of the models, designers, make-up and hair stylists to
her studio at #ArdentWest in San Francisco's SOMA for 7 hours of
fast-paced, rewarding work. Audrey describes herself on her Twitter profile (@yerdua) as
"Post-nihilist, post-gender, geeky, artist/photographer type, mostly filled with excitement and curiosity." She
is all that AND thoughtful, talented, generous and funny. She put the
models at ease, respecting them and empowering each one to be themselves
in front of the camera. Audrey
worked collaboratively with Holly and Kalico on their vision of each
ensemble and with Todi on overall direction and feeling. It was a long
day as each model had professional make-up by Joey McGuire and hair
styled by Shannon Solano (more on those two in upcoming blog articles),
then dressed by Kalico or Holly...then undressed and onto the next!

Audrey's
enthusiasm was as high with the last at 9pm as it was with the first at
3pm. She was supported by Slim (@sfslim) as photo assistant setting up
backdrop and lights and by the generosity of all the people of Ardent
West.

Of
course there's more... Audrey spent the next day viewing hundreds of
photos, passing along dozens of each model for final selection and
upload to the Edwardian Ball's production team. Thanks to everyone
creating the big show
and a heartfelt thank you to Audrey!